Publish First, Ask Questions Later

Share

Publish First, Ask Questions Later

published in F1000Research

. (Image Credit: Jonathan Gilthorpe et al.)

The academic publishing process is a pain. You format your research article just so, in accordance with the typographic whims of a given journal. You receive feedback from experts; if salvageable, rounds of resubmission follow, and if not, you reformat and peddle your wares elsewhere. Ultimately, most articles are published in one venue or another, but the time from data to publication can take months, if not years.

Of course, quality control in an industry where only a few people have the means to get answers is essential, and after going through the gauntlet, your research is vetted, sealed with the imprimatur of peer review. But does it have to take so long? And does the whole process really need to be so mysterious?

The F1000Research journal, published by Faculty of 1000, is hoping to solve these issues with a new model of peer review and open access. After undergoing a quick check for egregious errors (roughly 90% of submissions pass this obstacle), a submitted article is published online, free and available to all, with a note that peer review is pending. Three expert referees must then evaluate the paper, offering one of three assessments: approval, approval with reservations, or rejection. As long as at least two referees give a vote of approval, the paper is marked as peer reviewed and indexed as a published article. The journal has published 250 papers since its inception in July of last year, and just five submissions have been rejected by all three reviewers.

There are clearly fewer barriers to publication with F1000Research, but how does the finished product stack up? A thorough investigation by Tim Vines at Scholarly Kitchen revealed that F1000Research reviewers’ comments are significantly shorter and less substantive than those in four renowned medical journals. And while authors are “strongly encouraged” to incorporate reviewers’ suggestions into subsequent iterations of the paper, anything less than a “reject” verdict is unlikely to inspire such effort. Vines concludes that “responsible researchers should therefore approach every paper from F1000 Research as if it has never been through peer review, and before using it in their research they should essentially review it themselves.”

Rebecca Lawrence, the managing director at F1000Research, believes this argument is overblown, and that the nature of academic research results in a self-policing push toward high quality work. “In the end, you need to stand by what you say,” says Lawrence, pointing out that a scientist’s long-term credibility is far more important than any single publication.

She also notes that F1000Research isn’t necessarily aiming to dethrone the Sciences and Natures of the academic publishing world. “Our focus isn’t exclusively on the high novelty, high impact science,” she notes. “If it’s solid science it will be published,” she notes, adding that negative results (i.e., experiments that don’t work) may not earn headlines, but do represent an important repository of knowledge from which the scientific community would benefit enormously.

But perhaps the most important benefit that F1000Research brings to the table is its quick turnaround. The lengthy process of traditional academic publishing isn’t merely frustrating and inefficient, it might also be irresponsible: in fields that bear on public policy or have health repercussions, there’s a societal imperative to get data into the public domain quickly. “It’s crazy that it takes so long for others to benefit from research,” says Lawrence, noting that “eventually most work will be published in some journal, so the process is just slowing everything down.”

It takes years for a new journal to gain a reputation (the all-important “impact factor” is only bestowed after two full years of continuous publication), so the jury’s still out on the quality and impact of work being published in F1000Research. If the scientific community buys in, the publication may benefit from a positive feedback loop, as prominent researchers seek to place their work in F1000Research.

As with any upstart entrant into an established field, it will take time to see how F1000Research fits into the broad ecosystem of 21st century academic publishing. But the journal is certainly a welcome entrant in the field, a breath of fresh air that gives the public a window into the scientific debates occurring on the front lines of research.